


Fire With all the Strength It Hath, and Lightning With Its Rapid Wrath

by JDylah_da_Kylah



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Fear, Ficlet, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Illustrated, Making Love, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route - "I want to stay with you.", Soul Bond, Thunder and Lightning, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 05:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10326269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JDylah_da_Kylah/pseuds/JDylah_da_Kylah
Summary: Everyone's afraid of something, particularly Surface-side. Strangely, though, it isn't Frisk who's frightened by the storm, as children so often are, nor even Papyrus, who might revel in its raw, new wildness—But a certain Boss Monster who'd chide herself for such a fear, and a skeleton who can't yet admit to her that it's not the storm which frightens him.Or: "All these I place . . . between myself and the powers of darkness."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Some shameless standalone (OOC?) Soriel fluff because after writing [_Eternal Return_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10195373) I just . . . I needed a break from Bad And Serious Things.
> 
> The title and accompanying text are taken from the Rune of St. Patrick, first introduced to me by Madeleine L'Engle's _A Swiftly Tilting Planet._ I reference her a lot in my Undertale fanfics—I'm not sure why—but there's something of the game, or at least how I conceptualize it, which reminds me of her works. Even though I'm not a Christian, and her books and poetry are rather universally and liberally so, there are some beautiful truths to them that I think transcend ideologies, theologies . . . All of which is to say I think they've influenced how I approach writing about Frisk, though especially Asriel and Chara.
> 
> And yes, I'm positive this time that this story doesn't fit in with the rest. ;)
> 
> Thoughts/reviews/comments'n'critiques are all welcome; I do hope you enjoy. <3

_The wind does not moan, the rain does not beat down; softly, then, waxes the night, the fecundity of the gibbous moon finally breaking through the darkness, gleaming there against her fur, her dark-vermilion eyes still alight with love, the pearly opalescence of him accentuated by the afterglow._

* * *

 

The sky flares bright, a burning light, a whiteness that sears against his eyesockets, delves into his skull, sends harried echoes through his SOUL because such blinding lights are far too reminiscent of—

_the kiddo's in the room next door. it's fine. it's fine._

Hollow litany _that_ is; Sans curls in upon himself, cyan sparking through his bones, the ache of unused magic adding misery to misery.

Beside him, then, his anchor shakes—

And that's far worse a thing than haunted memories—

* * *

"hey—tori?"

Only then does he realize how that great head of hers is buried in the pillows, how rigid she is, her paws clenched into fists such that he's glad, oh glad, that she keeps her claws filed. Again the sky flashes, a rapid-fire succession of blows against the darkness which blur one into another, dizzying and terrifying, evoking in him the same desperation as when—as when—just at the end—when he was so _tired_ —and it seemed there was no defeating them—when his attacks were all flung from him, a savage calculation, the last that he could grasp, praying for their death, for the fiend to quit, for the kid to RESET—

Reflexively he reaches for her—slipping his radius and ulna just there beneath her arm—

He feels her shudder when the house shakes, when that great resounding roar seems to volley down from nowhere. As she turns to him in the momentary respite between the next round of light and sound, her dark-vermilion eyes gleam wide.

"Dear one." A nervous laugh, slipping up the scale, whistles through clenched fangs. "Dear one, would you believe that I am afraid?"

Truthfully—he can. Once he'd have looked at Tori and thought her incapable of fear. But for the day she asked him to promise—

"hey. tori. it's okay."

She turns, wrapping a broad, strong arm around him, gathering him unto herself not for his comfort, as so often is the case, but hers.

"A silly thing. It is just a thunderstorm. I heard them before . . . but it has been so long . . . I was afraid of them back then as well, dear one." Something catches in her voice. "I do not know why."

"i think some things are scary just because they are. there aren't always reasons."

"But you, dear one? You shiver, too."

"nah. i'm fine."

Restively Sans clenches his fist, hoping somehow to snuff out the magic gathered there, to quell the cyan light. A useless gesture that is, though—even if she doesn't see, she feels the harried echoes of his SOUL—she's always been so good at reading him, when not even P'yrus—

Frisk gathers the nuances, sage and compassionate child that they are, but Sans doesn't have the heart to tell Tori the reason—nor why the child often, in the middle of the night, clambers into bed with them, shivering just as they shiver now, woken by a nightmare.

_why i'm—_

"You are not afraid of storms, dear one."

Toriel sighs deeply, begins to nuzzle at his cheekbone in reassurance, still twitching at every lightning-flash and thunder-roar.

"You were dreaming again."

He runs agile phalanges through the fur of one soft-silken ear, debating now, as every time, what to tell her, when. Well enough she might read his SOUL, might catch all of the unspoken things, but . . .

"Do not be afraid, dear one. My fear of the storm is a thing for which there is no reason I can give. But you? Sans, so often do you . . ."

"don't. please, tori."

Delicate indigo tendrils begin to weave themselves about him, the labyrinthine form of his that somehow, somehow, she, a Monster-wrought-of-flesh, somehow still she loves.

This isn't what he'd entirely intended, seeking the comfort of her in the dark—but so it is—the act spun in the gentlest, most soothing words, whisperings half-lost to the gale and rain-chatter and basso laughter of the storm. Perhaps, he idly thinks, it's merely a distraction, a way for her to forget—when she was younger, would she not have picked up a book, or made some tea?

Or—with—

The subtle play of her paws, such a contradiction, such broad things finding all the smallest, sacred places there of him—snaps him sharply back to what is before him, what is real, what is beyond damning speculation.

She's never, not once, spoken of her relationship with Asgore.

Nor has he mentioned the iterations of the Judgment Hall when—

No.

Nor need they ever, really, though perhaps someday they will.

His SOUL keeps a counter-rhythm to her own, a far deeper communion than the superficial dance of bones and flesh, though it's still in strains of song and voice that their rapture finds an echo. So lost therein are they that scarcely do they notice the gentling of the sky, the subtle stalling of the scudding clouds, the cessation of the lightning's dance and that the thunder's wild laugh is but a chuckle now.

The wind does not moan, the rain does not beat down; softly, then, waxes the night, the fecundity of the gibbous moon finally breaking through the darkness, gleaming there against her fur, her dark-vermilion eyes still alight with love, the pearly opalescence of him accentuated by the afterglow.

For a long time, longer than they know, half-lured now to sleep, thusly they lay, much as he'd intentionally sought her in the fury of the storm: her great head rests on the pillows, which he doesn't mind, because cradled there against her chest, he can tuck his head beneath the curving of her jaw, and he'd much rather have her warmth and nearness than some paltry thing of cloth and down.

* * *

"tori."

"Hm. Dear one."

She's woken before he, roused at the sound of Frisk dancing across the room next door, the shower running, the clatter of his brother's bones as he bounds to the kitchen, eager as always to make them breakfast—even if it's just to pour a bowl of that strange, sweet cereal they always seem to like.

Golden light seeps through the window, somewhat weakened now but with the promise of brightness, of a clear, bold day and a flashing dawn.

Toriel makes as if to throw back the covers, to tuck the memory of night into her mind for when the next storm comes.

But Sans reaches out, fumbling for her, clinging so tightly to her arm that she dares not move. His head is still buried against her, such that she can feel every undulation of his skull, even through her fur—tender as that is, far more pronounced is the prickling of his SOUL, the wariness—

 _Dreams are not always half-remembered when we wake_ , she reasons slowly, stroking at him with an idle, patient paw. _Sometimes they follow us . . ._

"tori—"

She knows well what's coming, an apology, an unneeded thing, a thing she knows hurts him.

"Hush now, dear one. We need not arise so soon. Let's wait until the light softens—"

This good, sweet Monster, bless her that she's caught on to those details, however much she doesn't know—

Toriel pulls him close again, in some ways even closer than before, as sometimes acts of comfort are far more binding than even acts of love. Tenderly she kisses him, in that nuanced way of hers—the brushing of her muzzle, the softest scraping of her fangs, the echoed trailing of her SOUL—and before long begins to rock him, gently, as she so often rocks the child.

"Let's just stay here for a while."


End file.
